Principles for Relationships from God's Word by Claudio Consuegra

You’ve got mail

The letter which you sent to us has been clearly read before me. Ezra 4:18 (NKJV)

Shana Lebowitz[i] claims that how you manage your e-mails may yield some important (and surprising) insights into the connection between email habits and personality traits. Here’s what she found.

The filer/delete. This is the person who sees a message in his inbox and takes action immediately. He will read the email, send a response if it calls for one, and then either delete it (because it’s no longer useful) or archives it in a specific folder. His email count typically hovers around zero. What this suggests is a desire for control. Whereas some people are fine leaving their house, their workspace, or their inbox a mess, filers/deleters would go crazy, and sticking to an inbox-management system fulfills their constant need for order.

The saver. The saver has only few unread emails in her inbox, but rarely deletes a message after she reads it. There may be several reasons for this behavior, one of which may be perfectionism. They have a long to-do list and want to do it all, including answering every e-mail, thoroughly and carefully. Saving emails is their way of deluding themselves into thinking they’ll get around to addressing them all. For some people, saving read e-mails gives them a sense of security that they could find stuff if they needed to.

The ignorer. Evidently, keeping hundreds or thousands of unread emails in your inbox is not necessarily a problematic behavior. At the same time, leaving e-mails unread may indicate that you’re overwhelmed or disengaged. On the other hand, ignoring e-mails may also mean that you recognize that checking and responding to every single e-mail may be keeping you so busy that it’s slowing down your progress. Some e-mail ignorers might actually be more organized and productive than everyone else.

The reality is that e-mail may reflect other people’s priorities for you and not necessarily important work that requires your immediate attention. Don’t allow it, or others, to control your life.

Father God, help us to make good use of our time and not allow other things or other people to distract us from what is truly important.